Dr.Pepper 10/2/4

[SODAPOPBOB]

I just sent Doyle Bailey the following message ...

Doyle ~

Regarding the Dr Pepper acl you said was the only one known and dated 1933/34 ...

Can you confirm the date and is it marked as such?

The earliest acl I am currently aware of is a 1934 "Jumbo Cola." If your Dr Pepper is in fact a 1933 then it will be the earliest acl ever recorded. If its a 1934 then it will tie with the Jumbo Cola.

Thanks a lot.

Bob

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

While I'm waiting to hear from Doyle I thought I would share the following ...

Notice that the bottle in question has a period (stop) after the Dr.

Which indicates it is at least early 1950s. (One reference said the period was discontinued in 1950) ???

The 10-2-4 part is interesting, too.

Bob

~*~

http://www.freenewyork.net/dpfaq.html


Section 3: Ads, Merchandise, Museums, and Literature


3.1 Why drink Dr Pepper at 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock, and 4 o'clock?

(Most of this info comes from the book The Legend of Dr Pepper/Seven Up.)

"Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2, and 4 o'clock," was the slogan for an ad campaign for Dr. Pepper that began in 1927. A study that year authored by a Dr. Walter H. Eddy "found that human energy dropped to its lowest point at 10:30am, at 2:30pm and again at 4:30pm daily." J.B. O'Hara of Dr. Pepper asked Tracy-Locke-Dawson Inc. (an ad agency), to design a campaign around that information. The agency held a contest, and Earle Racey, one of their copywriters, won with his "10-2-4" idea--the idea being that drinking the sugary, caffeinated soda at 10am, 2pm, and 4pm would perk you up and get you through those impending energy drops a half-hour later. The slogan has endured in one form or another ever since.



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3.2 What happened to the period after "Dr" in Dr Pepper?

Around 1950, the Dr. Pepper Company changed the font in the Dr Pepper logo to a slanted block-letter style, in which the lower case letter r resembled a diagonal line with a dot in the upper right-hand corner. Unfortunately, when paired with a period, the "Dr." in Dr. Pepper looked more like "Di:" (Di + a colon), so the decision was made by the company to remove the period altogether. As W.W. "Foots" Clements, the President of the Dr Pepper Company from 1969 to 1980, explained in a 1984 interview (quoted in The Legend of Dr Pepper/Seven Up):

"We took it out basically for two reasons. One, cosmetic, to make the new trademark look like Dr Pepper, and the other, to get us away from the medicinal connotation."

This didn't stop soda jerks from calling the drink "M.D." in their jargon, according to Paul Dickson in The Great American Ice Cream Book (New York: Atheneum, 1972), but that's neither here nor there.

 

[epackage]

ORIGINAL: SODAPOPBOB

I just sent Doyle Bailey the following message ...

Doyle ~

Regarding the Dr Pepper acl you said was the only one known and dated 1933/34 ...

Can you confirm the date and is it marked as such?

The earliest acl I am currently aware of is a 1934 "Jumbo Cola." If your Dr Pepper is in fact a 1933 then it will be the earliest acl ever recorded. If its a 1934 then it will tie with the Jumbo Cola.

Thanks a lot.

Bob

I'm voting against the bottle being that early, I don't see the two color process preceeding the one color of the Jumbo, just a thought...

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

I was mistaken. Doyle does not own the afore mentioned 1933/34 acl bottle. Here's what he had to say about it [partially edited].

~*~

Bob

The reason I say 33/34 is because that is when the first ACLs were introduced. It has the old brick road logo and the man who took the picture in Dallas at the Dr. Pepper plant there 16 years ago told me it was the first ACL bottle for Dr. Pepper and that the paper label attached to it mentioned this. It was an experimental bottle as they never went into production. The man is now dead so I have no way to verify what he said and exactly what the attached paper label said. As far as I know he had the only known first picture of this bottle and shared it with me to put in the Dr. Pepper Bottle Price Guide.

I'm sorry I could not be of more help.

Doyle

 

[epackage]

What do you think about what I said Bob?

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

ORIGINAL: epackage

What do you think about what I said Bob?

Honestly, I'm not sure what to think. The only thing I can think of is to try and determine a confirmed date for a super early Dr. Pepper acl that we are sure of and then go from there. I'm comfortable with Doyle's recollection in that the bottle in question was experimental and intended to be Dr. Pepper's first acl. Now all we have to do is find one (and it's date) that we know for certain went into production and assume the "brick-road" bottle preceeded that. As for the two color aspect, who knows? It doesn't seem likely but one never knows.

Question: When did Dr. Pepper first produce and market an acl?

Bob

 

[splante]

I think the 4 with no period on the base would of been enough for me.

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

PS ~

If the brick-road bottle was in fact experimental as I believe it was, it could be that the two-color aspect is what prevented it from going into production because they discovered it was way too expensive and changed to a one color that was cheaper. But then again, when I stop and think about it, I can't recall a one-color Dr. Pepper. The one's that come to mind have the red and white 10-2-4 clock and those are also a two-color. So I'm stumped!

Bob

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

PS ~ PS

I think there might also be a clue to be found in that the brick-road lettering is script and not blocked. I'm not sure when they switched from script to block lettering, but it might be worth researching.

Bob

Here's what I believe to be an example of early block lettering. But I'm not sure of the date ... ???

 

[zecritr]

Sweet thx for the info